Diane Abbott's 42-days speech

The Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP's speech last night was hailed by the Tory who followed her, David Davies, as 'one of the finest speeches I have heard since being elected to the House of Commons'. Here is what she said.

Diane Abbott protesting against the increase in the length of time terrorism suspects can be detained without charge on June 10. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen/Rex Features

As has been said throughout this debate, the first duty of parliament is the safety of the realm. It is because I believe that the proposals on 42-day detention will make us less safe, not more safe, that I oppose them. I do not take terrorism lightly.

I am a Londoner and I heard the last major IRA bomb, at Canary Wharf, from my kitchen in east London. Like thousands of Londoners, I waited for the early-morning call that assured me that friends and family on their way to work and school had not been caught up in those bombings. I will not take lectures from ministers about not taking terrorism seriously.

I do not believe, as ministers continue to insist, that there is some trade-off between our liberties and the safety of the realm. What makes us free is what makes us safe, and what makes us safe is what will make us free.

I ask the house to reflect on how we got here. Two years ago, this house emphatically rejected the proposal for 90-day detention. I do not talk very much about custom and practice in parliament, but it is custom and practice that when the government lose a vote on a proposal, they do not bring back a similar proposal in the same parliament.

My hon friends in the whips office now know why that is so: it is because losing the vote is a clue that the government do not have the votes. The government machinery has devoted 10 days to bone-crunching pressure on potential rebels, again because they do not have the votes. Ministers have appeared in the media saying that they have won the argument. They may win the vote, but they have emphatically not won the argument.

Two years ago, the house rejected the 90-day proposal. The issue should never have come back, and all this high drama has been caused by bringing back something that the house has already rejected. I voted for 28 days, but I remind the house that I and others did so only under duress.

We believed that by voting for 28 days the debate would be finished for this parliament and an upper limit would be established. Some of us were unwilling to go as far as 28 days. That is why we are so upset that the government have come back with this proposal, reneging—as far as we are concerned—on a tacit understanding that voting for 28 days would finish the debate on this issue for this parliament.

Why have the government come back with this proposal? Speculation has raged on the Labour benches as to what has moved the prime minister to take this dangerous course. Some people say that he wants to try to do something that Tony Blair could not do. Some people say that he is driven by the polls. Some people say that last year he saw an article in the Sun that said that he was soft on terrorism and he has been heading down this path ever since.

In reality and despite everything that ministers say, nothing has changed since two years ago. The arguments that they used then about computers and complications are the arguments that they are using now. I ask ministers to spare the house those arguments about decrypting computers. The law exists to deal with people who wilfully refuse to decrypt computer evidence.

The government came back with a proposal that the house rejected two years ago. Interestingly, when they did so it then took them several months to come up with a time limit. Was it to be 29 days, or 30, or 40? At one point, some of us offered to put our hands in a hat and to draw out a number for the home secretary.

They did not have a number of days because this is not an objective, evidence-driven bill. It is the purest politics. It is about the polls and about positioning. It is about putting the Conservative party in the wrong place on terrorism.

I put it to colleagues that we should not play ducks and drakes with our civil liberties in order to get a few months' advantage in the opinion polls. We have got here through a process that involved the wrong practical politics and was wrongly motivated.

Let me remind the house of what is problematic about the proposal. The security services have unusually gone public and said that they are not calling for the change. The director of public prosecutions, unusually, has gone public and said that he is not calling for it. I remind the House that he is the prosecuting authority.

"We will hear from ministers about the police, but the police are split on the subject. We have heard about Sir Ian Blair—whose days might be numbered under the former Member for Henley; hey, that's life—but the most senior Muslim policeman in the Metropolitan police force, Tarique Ghaffur, has said privately and emphatically that he believes that the risk to community cohesion of the proposal is not worth any operational advantage.

It is alleged—I use that word because I do not want to abuse parliamentary privilege—that he was called in by Sir Ian Blair and asked to consider his position. The police are split on this subject. Let us hear no more about the police as a whole being behind the proposal.

Frank Cook (Labour MP for Stockton North): Will my hon. Friend take account of the fact that even those chief police officers who have expressed some kind of support have done so in terms of "it could be workable" rather than "it is desirable"? Everything could be workable—Buchenwald and Dachau were workable, but they were hardly desirable.

Abbott: Yes, it was said that the proposals could be workable in the future. There are some very clever lawyers in the chamber today, and it seems to me that much of the debate is locked into the legalities and technicalities. I come at the matter from a slightly different angle.

It seems to me that, if someone is in detention for six weeks without knowing why, and they therefore have no notion of whether they will be able to get out without being charged, that detention is coercive in itself. We saw in the big miscarriage of justice cases what people will sign after only a few weeks.

The possibility of compensation which my right hon friend, the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) is trying to float will put pressure on the police to charge. Some of my colleagues whom one might expect to be opposed to the change because of its effect on their communities have been seduced by the compensation package, but I have read the letter. It talks about going away and considering the subject, and says that the compensation might be implemented.

How will it be sustainable to compensate Muslims for being held for more than 28 days when the police have held them completely lawfully and not to compensate others of whatever religion or ethnicity who have been held for seven, eight or nine days and have not been charged? The compensation package will not survive scrutiny by the courts.

If my hon friends want to vote with the government because they want to be loyal to the prime minister in his time of trial, they should do so. No one will think less of them for that. But they should not vote with the government on the basis of a shoddy compensation package that will not stand up and will never come into being.

The proposal is problematic. Some colleagues say that the provision will never be used and some say it is unworkable, so why not vote for it? They say that it is just a joke and will never be used, but even if the government never use the provision I take exception to their saying that it is worth driving a coach and horses through our civil liberties for mere short-term political advantage.

As I said earlier, because the government do not have the votes, they have spent the past 10 days putting good, conscientious colleagues—who naturally enough want to support the leader of their party, our prime minister—under incredible pressure.

People whom the prime minister has never spoken to in his life have been ushered into his presence twice in 48 hours. They should have a shred of sympathy for them.

People have been offered Cuba, and no doubt governorships of Bermuda have been bandied about. Any rebel backbencher with a cause is confident—if they vote the right way of course—that the prime minister will make the statement, give the money or make the special visit. That is humorous, but is it right that our civil liberties should be traded in such a bazaar? Is it appropriate or right that we should trade votes at the United Nations on the basis of such political pandering?

The reason why the government have had to put such pressure on people is because they cannot muster the votes. They have only one argument that could sway me, as a member of the Labour party for more than 30 years: the leader of our party is in a difficult situation, there are elements in the party that do not necessarily wish him the very best, so is this the time to vote against the government?

That argument could affect people who are loyal to the prime minister, do not want to see him go and do not believe that a new leader can wave a magic wand, but I tell the house this: I became active in politics in the 1980s, at a time of enormous turmoil—there were riots in Brixton, Liverpool and Bristol, "Scrap sus" was a huge issue and young black men were seen as the enemy within, just as young Muslim men are today.

I came into politics because of my concern about the relationship of the state to communities that are marginalised and suspected. It is easy to stand up for the civil liberties of our friends or of people in our trade union, but it is not easy to stand up for the civil liberties of people who are unpopular, suspected and look suspicious—people the tabloids print a horror story about every day.

However, it is a test of parliament that we are willing to stand up for the civil liberties of the marginalised, the suspect and the unpopular.

I came into politics about those issues, and I believe that if there is any content at all in ministers' constant speeches about community cohesion we must offer every part of our community not just the appearance but the reality of justice and equality before the law.

Everybody knows that the provisions will impact disproportionately on the Muslim and ethnic minority communities. Everybody knows that we shall not be detaining the Saudi paymasters of terror for 42 days; just as happened under internment, we shall be scraping up the flotsam and jetsam of communities.

Ministers are talking about people such as my constituents, so when Muslim boys and black converts are in prison and their mothers, some of whom may not even be able to speak English properly, come to me and say, "They have had my son for five weeks and nobody will tell me why", what do ministers suggest I tell them about a measure that has been brought in only for short-term political convenience?

I did not come into politics to vote for such a stratagem, and despite all the current pressures on the party I will not vote for it. The case has not been made up until now and it has not been made in this debate.

Of course the public are in favour of the proposal. Of course the people whose rights some of us are trying to defend are unpopular and suspect. But if we as a parliament cannot stand up on this issue, and if people from our different ethnic communities cannot come here and genuinely reflect their fears and concerns, what is parliament for?